Appeals court orders new trial for man on Texas death row over judge’s anti-Semitic bias

SAN ANTONIO – A Texas appeals court on Wednesday ordered a new trial for a Jewish man on death row who was part of a prison gang that fatally shot a police officer after escaping in 2000 because the judge presiding over his case had anti-Semitic bias.

Lawyers for Randy Halprin have alleged that former Dallas judge Vickers Cunningham used racial slurs and anti-Semitic language to refer to him and some of his co-defendants.

Halprin, 47, was among a group of inmates known as the “Texas 7” who escaped from a South Texas prison in December 2000 and went on to commit numerous robberies, including the one in which they shot and killed 29-year-old Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins eleven times and killed him.

By a 6-3 majority, the Texas Court of Appeals ordered Halprin’s conviction overturned and a new trial against him after concluding that Cunningham was biased against him at the time of his trial because he was Jewish.

The appeals court found evidence that Cunningham repeated baseless anti-Semitic narratives throughout his life. When Cunningham became a judge, he continued to use derogatory words about Jewish people outside the courtroom, “with ‘great hatred, (and) disgust,’ and increasing in intensity over the years,” the court said.

It also said that during Halprin’s trial, Cunningham made offensive anti-Semitic comments outside the courtroom about Halprin in particular and Jews in general.

“The uncontradicted evidence supports the finding that Cunningham formed an opinion about Halprin that was based on an extrajudicial factor – Cunningham’s toxic anti-Semitism,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling.

The court had already stopped Halprin’s execution in 2019.

“Today, the Court of Appeals took a step toward greater confidence in the criminal law by throwing out a hopelessly tainted death sentence from a bigoted and biased judge,” Tivon Schardl, one of Halprin’s lawyers, said in a statement. “It also reminded Texans that religious bigotry has no place in our courts.”

The order for a new trial came after Dallas District Judge Lela Mays said in a December 2022 ruling that Cunningham did not or could not contain the influence of his anti-Semitic bias on his judicial decisions during the trial.

Mays wrote that Cunningham used racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs to refer to Halprin and the other escaped inmates.

Cunningham resigned from his position in 2005 and is now an attorney in private practice in Dallas. His office said Wednesday that he would not comment on Halprin’s case.

Cunningham previously denied allegations of bigotry after telling the Dallas Morning News in 2018 that he had a living trust that rewarded his children for marrying straight, white Christians. He had spoken out against interracial marriage, but later told the newspaper that his views had evolved.

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office was hired to handle legal issues related to Halprin’s allegations after the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, was disqualified.

In September 2022, Tarrant County prosecutors filed court documents saying Halprin should get a new trial because Cunningham had shown “actual bias” against him.

One of the seven escaped prisoners killed himself before the group was arrested. Four were executed. Another, Patrick Murphy, is awaiting execution.

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